As someone living in a southern European welfare state, I'll just say that I'm jealous of the US immigration policies. The free-for-all policy that we have here depresses wages, raises crime rates, and dilutes our culture.
> Children are especially malleable to school indoctrination and easily give up their (not yet formed) ethnicity.
You're ignoring the fact that most foreigners from the same country of origin will chose to live with their own communities, creating ethnic ghettos, that the parents don't magically stop teaching their birth language, culture and customs to their kids when they move to a foreign country, that Europe isn't really far from Africa or Middle-East so that families will go back to country the parent's country of origin every summer.
So basically the American model of society in action in Europe.
Sadly I would have to agree about "most" - but not overwhelmingly so, don't forget that "failures" are much more visible than "successes" here !
Still, IMHO ghettos are (mostly) the result of lazy assimilation policies.
It's funny, just today, in between these comments I had a discussion with an Ukrainian mother that was concerned that her kid had too many Russian speakers in her school group, and so that would make it harder for her to learn the local language...
(Considering all these comments I perhaps should have been softer about "giving up [their] ethnicity", I didn't want to mean completely ! Retaining some of the old one is fine, even good, as long as the culture and the values are compatible - it's not like Nations are completely homogeneous anyway, and diversity is strength !)
> Citizenship should be automatic for those that have been around since (public) middle school (give or take).
The examples of educated and well integrated individuals are very sympathetic and most people would agree that US immigration policy is deeply flawed but any path the permanent residency will create powerful incentives. Are you saying any 12yo who comes and lives in the US for six years automatically gets citizenship?
Is that really what we want to incentivize? I'm concerned that trying to "patch" up immigration policy with one-off fixes will just created further problems in the future.
Maybe it would be better to create a true professional immigration process (like Canada?) that would accommodate these individuals and eliminate the mess that's H1B?
> Are you saying any 12yo who comes and lives in the US for six years automatically gets citizenship?
IMO, being able to vote in the country you live and pay taxes in is basically a fundamental human right.
The idea that you should deprive immigrants who are living somewhere permanently of the right of self determination based on some sort of nationalistic idea of how countries should function just seems extremely misguided to me.
If you don't want to let them in that's one thing but once they're living there and paying taxes beyond maybe a few years they're entitled to vote.
> Children are especially malleable to school indoctrination and easily give up their (not yet formed) ethnicity.
I'm not sure why you're saying that like it's a good thing. That sounds horrible.
But I do agree with you. If by "southern Europe", GP meant Italy, I can definitely confirm what you're saying. Like many Romanians, I have family members in Italy and the children either don't speak Romanian at all or speak it quite badly.
It's just what it is, the society that we live in shapes even the adult us - so you better be very careful where you raise your children. (As young adults they will be always able to find themselves and pick a different path, but it's better if they don't start with an handicap in that society.)
And yeah, it can be hard to strike the right balance - do these family members spend some effort to teach Romanian to their kids ?
> easily give up their (not yet formed) ethnicity.
Oh do they? Actually going on the field shows pretty clear signs that those don’t mix, even if the state forbids us from doing stats on how many ethnicities beat up our white kids.
What is your intent, really? What is your intent with our kids?
